


Lullabies Lost to the Wind

by heartsick_stranger



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Gen, Not Beta Read, Reggie Needs a Hug (Julie and The Phantoms), Reggie-centric (Julie and The Phantoms), give Reggie a backstory, giving reggie feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27173095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartsick_stranger/pseuds/heartsick_stranger
Summary: "He loves his band, but sometimes, a part of him really wishes he hadn’t had to die with them. He always calls that part of his brain selfish, because that’s how it feels every time he has that thought. He wishes he could stop feeling so bitter, deep down, but why didn’t the universe let them live? If he had lived all this time— no, no, if the band had lived all this time, including Bobby, because Reggie hates what he did but he really really misses him— then he wouldn’t have lost contact with his own parents, and Luke’s parents wouldn’t be so sad, and Luke wouldn’t be so sad, and they would have all gotten the lives they’d dreamed of having because they were—Reggie has to stop himself mid-walk, in the middle of the street somewhere in L.A., to blink past tears. Because they were just kids when they died. How messed up is that?"-Reggie is already dead, so why does he only feel this haunted after almost dying a second time?
Relationships: Alex & Julie Molina & Luke Patterson & Reggie, Alex & Luke Patterson & Reggie (Julie and The Phantoms), Alex & Reggie (Julie and The Phantoms), Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Reggie, Flynn & Julie Molina, Julie Molina & Reggie, Luke Patterson & Reggie (Julie and The Phantoms)
Comments: 29
Kudos: 184





	Lullabies Lost to the Wind

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [breathing room](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26730940) by [DarknessChill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarknessChill/pseuds/DarknessChill). 



> This kinda gets a little dark???
> 
> Like yeah they're dead. They almost stopped existing completely. There's gotta be some mental stuff to have to deal with, after that.
> 
> So... yeah, I guess this is my attempt at writing Reggie trying to reconcile his feelings about being dead.
> 
> Oh! Also, this mentions Bobby and Reggie being friends, because I feel like people kinda disregard that Bobby was their friend... y'know, BEFORE he took credit for all the band's music. I think it was seriously messed up that he did that, yeah, and I'm not trying to excuse that because it's awful that he didn't give them credit at all, but they WERE friends.  
> (It's not even really going to go into it much in this story, actually, I just thought I'd mention it.)
> 
> EDIT: I forgot to add this when I posted it at like 2am, but all the lyrics in here are mine, so please don't steal them.  
> (And, as it says in the tags, this is unbeta'd)
> 
> Enjoy!

When Reggie disappears from the stage of the Orpheum with Alex and Luke, finally fulfilling their dream, he thinks they’re in the clear.

They poof backstage and are all smiling at each other, and Reggie is about to go in to hug two of his favorite dorks (Julie has taken Bobby’s seat as the third favorite dork), but then he feels a huge jolt in his chest that makes him feel like someone’s trying to rip his heart out.

_Oh, no._

_No._

Caleb was right.

The Orpheum wasn’t their unfinished business, and they’re still here. They’re still under his curse. They’re not going to cross over. There’s not enough time to figure out what else it could be and fix it.

They’re going to disappear. Their souls are going to vanish. They won’t go to heaven or hell or whatever’s waiting for them on the other side.

Soon they’ll just be gone.

He looks up at Luke and Alex, lips parted, and wants to cry even more. “Guys?”

“We were wrong,” Luke whispers, and his voice _breaks_ , and then Reggie breaks. He starts crying.

“We’re going to die,” he says, and none of the guys say _we’re already dead, Reggie_ like he’s expecting. And he starts to wonder why but then he thinks of Julie.

And Julie… oh, God, _Julie_. She’s going to be left alone again. Just because she had a few days in advance to process it doesn’t mean that she’ll be able to recover. Reggie has had enough self esteem checks, in life and in death over the years, to know that he’s not being vain by saying Julie cares about them. He’s seen the way Julie and Luke look at each other. He knows Julie trusts Alex.

She’s even grown to like Reggie’s company. He likes hers even more.

They’ve brought her back to life just as much as she brought them back when she played their CD. Based on what Flynn says and what Ray says and even what Carlos says sometimes, they’ve brought her back to life just as much as she brings them back to life when they’re all on stage.

She can’t see them like this. He doesn’t want to be the reason she’s too haunted, too traumatized to ever connect with anyone again or to ever sing again.

“Julie, guys, we have to—” he stops himself, and inhales, wiping away his tears. “We can’t be here when she comes off-stage. We need to go.”

“We can’t just leave without saying goodbye,” Luke looks like he’d rather yell it, but if the jolts are affecting them all the same way then that would take too much energy. Reggie doesn’t even have a corporeal being but he is _aching_. It hurts to move right now.

“We can’t stay,” Alex says quietly. “She thinks we’ve crossed over. It’s better that way.”

“Where can we go?”

“The studio,” Luke replies immediately, like it’s the only place he wants to be right now. Reggie hates to think it, but it feels a little too poetic to die there, where they got back this second chance at life.

(And messed it up.)

“We can’t go to the studio, Luke, she’ll go there as soon as she gets home,”

“No, no, she’ll be tired. She’ll probably just go to bed,” Luke reasons. “And if she comes by in the morning then—”

“We’ll be gone by then.”

“Gone forever,”

Reggie speaks up, because he can hear Julie and Flynn’s voices approaching. “She’s going to be here soon, guys. Let’s just go to the garage,” and then he adds, “It’s not like we have anywhere else we can go,”

Because isn’t it true? They can’t go to any of their houses and they can’t go to any of their old haunts. They could probably go to the beach, but Reggie doesn’t feel as soothed by the rolling tides as he did when he was alive. When he was alive he’d come to the beach when he needed to breathe. Now if he goes to the beach all he remembers is that he’s dead and that the beach can’t help him with fighting back the nausea anymore.

They poof to the garage, and they all collapse into each other in a pile on the floor once they do. Ghost-teleportation takes even more energy than moving normally. It’s completely dark in the studio, so it takes his eyes a minute to adjust to the lack of light. Reggie finds his feet under Alex’s back on the floor, and his head hurts a little from hitting the ground so hard. Luke’s feet are next to his face, and he looks over to see that Luke’s and Alex’s heads are next to each other but their bodies are perpendicular. 

He feels so weak, and it hurts to move, but part of him wonders if it would speed up this slow feeling of fading from reality. He dreads to think of what might happen if Julie comes back and they’re still here. He doesn’t want her to see them in pain like this.

“Hey guys?” he asks quietly. Neither Luke nor Alex says anything, but they both turn to look at him and he just has to give them a weak smile. “Thanks for being the most ride-or-die friends a guy could ask for.”

The tears from before have already dried on his face, but he feels his eyes welling up again. There’s so much more he wishes he could say but doesn’t know how to. He’s spent his entire life and his entire afterlife being goofy so people wouldn’t ask him about his feelings, but there are so many things he now wishes he hadn’t let go unsaid.

_Thanks for not giving up on me. Thanks for finding me and asking me to be your lucky bassist. Thanks for always being there for me. Thanks for the love and the hope and the hugs._

_Thanks for being my family._

(Though that includes Julie, and he definitely doesn’t think he could say that out loud right now. Not when they’re about to leave her.)

Instead he just says, “You guys are the only people I’d want to die with,” and adds, “Both times.” Because it’s true, and, maybe you can’t die twice, but if he’s fading out of existence completely, then he’s glad it’s with Luke and Alex.

He doesn’t ask if people will remember them this time. He doesn’t ask stupid or goofy questions like usual. He just sits there in silence until Luke says, “We’re the only family we’re ever going to need,” and it’s not at all the same tone as that day on the beach; Luke’s voice seems ragged and hollow and— Reggie doesn’t know for sure, but he thinks it’s— sort of _final_? Like he’s accepted what’s happening and he’s not happy with it but he’s done trying to change it, almost like he’s lost all hope, and that’s the worst thing that Reggie could have had to hear before he disappears forever.

Luke Patterson losing hope feels like the world losing oxygen.

“I love you guys,” Alex tells them. “Thank you for everything.”

And Reggie moves his feet away from Alex’s back, just before he starts shaking with silent tears. He shuts his eyes and tries to pretend he’s back in that dark room that he never thought they’d escape to begin with, and he lets himself lose track of time.

♮ ♮ ♮

Reggie and Luke and Alex all get a few more jolts to the chest by the time Julie and Ray and Carlos get home. Reggie feels himself tense because, after a minute, he hears footsteps coming down the steps toward the garage.

Reggie is exhausted, both from crying and from the jolts. And then the double doors to the garage studio open, and Julie is there. She’s just _there_ , existing, and she thinks they’re already gone and _wow_ their Julie is truly one of the strongest people he’s ever met.

He hears her breathe out. “I… I know I already said this but, uh… thank you, guys.”

And apparently what’s left of his brain has been fried, because despite all his worries about her seeing them fading away like this, he almost instinctively says “you’re welcome.” 

Alex just sighs and Luke goes “ _dude_.”

Julie turns on the lights. “W-Why are you here? I thought—”

There’s another jolt and Reggie bites down on his tongue so hard that he thinks it would be bleeding if he were still alive. Can ghosts bleed? Even if they can, it won’t matter once they fade out of existence.

They all sit up, and Reggie has to anchor himself to the armchair next to him to try to keep himself upright. “No, no, I thought you crossed over. Why didn’t you cross over?”

“I guess playing the Orpheum wasn’t our unfinished business,” Alex says.

Reggie feels really, really weak right now, like even his ghost form is seconds away from melting into a puddle of goo. He also feels really, _really_ tired. 

And they try to explain it all to her, but then another jolt comes and Reggie wants to cry. Julie is crying now and he _hates_ that he’s the reason for it. He should have kept his mouth shut; if not for him, she wouldn’t be seeing them like this. 

“You have to save yourselves, right now. Go join Caleb’s club, please! It’s better than not existing at all.”

(Reggie can’t remember if they ever asked Caleb if they could do both— be his house band but still perform with Julie.)

((He doesn’t really think either party would have agreed to that anyway.))

Reggie doesn’t have the energy to try to put his feelings into words, because he’s never been quite good at that. He doesn’t know how to explain the difference between playing with Caleb and playing with her, but to put it simply, playing with Caleb is like an eternity under Satan’s direct orders, and playing with Julie feels like they’re alive again— no, _more_ than alive; for Reggie it’s like anything is possible, be it breathing stardust or building a fortress out of their lyrics and melodies.

“Please, just go!” She’s pleading and Reggie just shakes his head as he pulls himself to his feet. “Go, poof out, do something— _please_ , do it for me, please.”

Reggie sits on the arm of the sofa chair. “We’re not going back there,” is all he can say.

But then there’s Luke, who puts it so perfectly and succinctly: “No music is worth making, Julie, if we’re not making it with you.” There’s a pause and Reggie looks over. “No regrets,” he sees Luke tell her.

And then Julie reaches out to hug him, and Reggie can barely remember that they’re ghosts because all his brain is focusing on is _we’re going to die_.

“I love you guys,” Julie says through tears. Reggie is going to cry. He wishes she’d said it before. _No_ , actually, he wishes _he’d_ said it before. It’s so bittersweet, hearing it now. It feels wrong to only say it at the end of it all.

Luke starts glowing, though, and Reggie doesn’t know what’s happening but suddenly they’re all stumbling their way into a group hug, and he’s pretty sure all three of them are glowing, and suddenly he feels almost alive again. Like, actually _alive_.

Julie’s arm is around his torso and Luke’s arm is right below it at his waist and Alex’s hand is right at the base of his neck, and Reggie doesn’t know how to describe it but yeah, he feels _alive_ . This feels _right_.

And he doesn’t remember what he says or what Alex says, but Caleb’s stamps on their wrists float away, and the band is back and nothing else matters.

Their little family all hugs again, and Reggie feels unstoppable.

♮ ♮ ♮

Last night at the Orpheum feels like a fever dream. It was too much of an emotional rollercoaster, and even for a Saturday night there had been too many things going on at once, and though Reggie doesn’t want to relive it, he also needs some kind of confirmation that last night— all of it— was real. And he doesn’t really want to have to ask Luke and Alex because if all of last night really happened then they’re probably just as spooked as he is.

But then Nick, Julie’s old crush— yes, _old_ as in _former_ crush, because Julie is practically a sister to him and he _sees_ the way she looks at Luke— is at the door and suddenly he drops the idea of even bringing it up because something feels _wrong_.

♮ ♮ ♮

Reggie has tried bringing up to Luke and Alex and Julie how he gets weird vibes from Nick, but he never knows how to explain it right. He doesn’t think it’s enough to base his suspicions off a gut instinct, and he doesn’t know how to explain the gut instinct that tells him _this person is a threat to my family_. Luke is the only person who agrees with him, but he’s pretty sure that’s just because he’s jealous of Julie’s former crush.

He doesn’t really get why, though. Julie can actually have physical contact with them now, and he knows Luke has been ‘testing’ how it works by not-so-subtly initiating little bits of physical contact by holding Julie’s hand or leaning his head on her shoulder, so it’s not like Luke has to be jealous that Nick can hold her hand and he can’t.

But whatever it is, Julie is aware enough of Luke’s jealousy that she kind of discounts _his_ suspicion about Nick. And though she tells Reggie she’ll humor his suspicions, he kind of knows she won’t because he’s the goofy dumb one.

They might not take him seriously about this, but he’s seriously worried about it.

♮ ♮ ♮

Reggie knows he’ll never seem like the smartest person in the room. He _knows_. All throughout his life and his afterlife, he’s crafted himself into the goofy one, and even though he’s mostly pretty good at reading the room he only ever uses it when he has to try to break the tension, because he got good at it after dealing with the tension between his parents for so long. And he’s not exactly street smart, especially considering he died of food poisoning from a hot dog mere minutes after cheerily saying “street dogs haven’t killed us yet.”

As sad as it is, maybe that means he’s psychic and doesn’t know it. Either that or some divine power is having too much fun with foreshadowing and dramatic irony.

No, Reggie knows he isn’t psychic. But he’s good with people. Or, at least, he likes to think he was when he was alive. And he’s actually kind of book smart? Before he and the rest of Sunset Curve dropped out, he’s pretty sure he’d had some of the best grades in their year. He loves history (and liked it as a class before he _became_ history) and he remembers liking math, and he was even vaguely interested in the science classes he’d been taking.

And, though the band might not believe him if he ever decides to tell them, he really meant what he said when he told them he missed high school. Not because of girls in hot matching outfits, but more because he misses the thrill of it all.

Reggie had always done his homework when he was in school, usually at Luke or Bobby’s place. It was almost never quiet enough for him to focus at his own house, and Alex had felt too uncomfortable around his parents in the last few years before the accident, had felt like too much of a stranger in his own house even before he told them he was gay, for anyone in the band to spend much time there. But no matter where he was or what he was doing, Reggie always got it done, whether right between school and band practice or at midnight or even at 7 in the morning before he left. He had always done his homework, and he talked back to the teachers sometimes when he could correct them with something he’d read on his own time, and when he wasn’t at the library or at band practice or with his bandmates, he was fooling around with any girls or guys who came to visit the City of Angels.

He really misses being able to fool around and have fun and hang out with people. He’s really grateful that he still has Luke and Alex, he really is, and he’s so grateful to have Julie because _what kind of afterlife would it be without his family_ and _what kind of afterlife would it be if he couldn’t do what he loved most?_

And honestly? _What kind of afterlife would this be without Julie Molina’s friendship?_

But he misses talking to people. He misses his parents, as much as he hated their fighting. He misses Bobby, as much as he hates what he did, because Bobby had been his best friend. He loves Luke and Alex and Julie, and he loves talking to Ray and Carlos and Flynn on the few occasions that they can now see him, but he misses socializing with new people. He misses socializing with people while in long lines. He misses socializing with anyone and everyone at school. He misses talking to people after gigs.

He remembers at one of Sunset Curve’s first real gigs, there was a kid who was maybe ten years old who came up to him— not up to the band but to _him_ specifically— and asked all about bass guitar and how long he’d been playing and how it was different from a normal guitar, and it was so fun talking to him.

Does remembering that moment so vividly make him vain? Does remembering so many experiences with fans make him vain?

He breathes all of these questions in while on an inhale, closing his eyes, and he exhales and opens his eyes again.

He looks at his band and smiles, because how can he not? He loves them and he knows they love him, and right now that’s enough. He wishes they believed him about Nick, but maybe that’s not the most important thing in the world.

(He tries to tell himself that his feelings of unease will fade eventually.)

((They don’t.))

♮ ♮ ♮

It’s been about a week since the Orpheum and there’s been no sign of Caleb since they left his club. Nick has been coming by more often, and Reggie keeps stealing Julie’s phone to ask Flynn to take Nick away so they can all actually practice or so Julie can study. Both are pretty important, given that they’ve got gigs lined up for the next few weeks and that Julie’s finals are in a few weeks.

On Friday, after a gig, Luke and Alex are talking about something in the studio but Reggie feels like he needs to talk to Julie. He poofs to the upstairs and knocks on her room door.

“Come in,” she calls out quietly.

He tries to walk through the door, only to find that he’s solid when he bumps his head on the door. He grunts, holding his head, and reaches for the door handle to push it open.

Reggie never thought he’d miss opening doors.

He walks in, one hand still holding his forehead, and Julie sits up a little from where she was lying flat on her back on her bed.

“You okay?” she asks with a small smile.

“Yeah, I went solid right when I was gonna walk through the door,” he waves it off, because it doesn’t hurt that much, really. “Anyway, we were good tonight,”

“We really were!” Julie whispers excitedly, and pats the spot next to her on the bed. He raises his eyebrows, because there was definitely a point where she said that her bed was off-limits, but she just smiles, scoots over a little in the other direction, and pats the spot again.

Pfft. He doesn’t need _that_ much space, especially considering how much he’s realized he enjoys cuddling (with Julie or the guys), but he sits down next to her on the bed anyway, and, after a few moments’ hesitation, puts his head on her shoulder.

“You were amazing, Julie,” he says quietly.

She rolls her eyes at him. “You just came in here to talk to me about how amazing I am?” She sounds amused.

“I mean, yes,” Reggie replies tiredly, turning his face away from her shoulder to stifle a yawn. “But also—”

“How amazing _you_ were tonight?”

Reggie lets out a huff. “No, but thank you,” Julie just giggles quietly and he feels his chest loosen a little. Yeah, this is definitely what family feels like. “I, uh— I noticed Nick was at the gig tonight?”

“Yeah, he’s been super supportive of the band since our first performance at the spirit rally. He even came for the show at the Orpheum!”

He hears the excitement in her whispered words and just sighs, because now he doesn’t want to say what he came up here to say. If he says it then he’ll just feel like a colossal jerk.

“What’s wrong, Reg?”

“Just, uh… do you remember when I told you guys I’m getting a weird vibe from Nick?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Yeah?” She frowns. “You were really being serious, huh?” He nods in response and she sighs. “So what are the vibes you’re getting?”

He pauses. “I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think I got this feeling from being around him before the Orpheum, so I thought maybe it was a weird side effect from the jolts or something or maybe because we’re now solid sometimes? I don’t know, I—”

“Reggie,” Julie interrupts, giving him a look. “Stop second-guessing yourself. Just tell me what’s wrong.”

Reggie gives her a weak smile. He’s not used to being taken seriously like this. 

“I don’t feel safe around him,” he tells her, and she blinks a few times. “I don’t feel like any of you guys are, either.”

She sits up and he panics, rolling off the bed as fast as he can, and starts trying to explain himself, and it’s hard to tell if he’s trying to explain it to her or whether he’s trying to explain himself _to_ himself. “I’m sorry, I know I’m probably overstepping boundaries again but I’m just really worried, okay? I love you guys and I don’t want to lose any of you, but around Nick I feel— I don’t know, less in control?”

And he realizes to himself, it’s kind of how he felt with Caleb: how he’d made them feel like they had a choice whether or not to be in his band, and then forced them anyway.

(Even worse, he realizes to himself that it’s kind of the same way he felt like with his parents sometimes. Not just with how they acted toward each other but how they acted toward him sometimes. Questions and questions and questions that turned into demands and demands that turned into screamed insults and _do this or else_.)

“Reggie?”

He doesn’t even realize his body is kind of shaking until Julie comes over. She slowly reaches out and takes his hands to steady them, and then pulls him into a hug.

“Just… please be careful, Julie?”

As soon as he feels her nod, he shuts his eyes and hugs her a little tighter.

♮ ♮ ♮

Reggie is writing a song with Julie, because she claims it’s a crime that his and Alex’s voices don’t get heard as much in the band’s songs. Alex is going to write one with her too, starting the next day. So Reggie is helping her write this one today, and she’s already given her word that the next one he writes with her will be a country song.

(She tries to promise that Luke will also do a country song with him, but Luke is still vetoing the idea that he’ll ever do anything but backup guitar for a country song.)

They start with lyrics.

“Do you have any lyrics written down that you might want to use for this?” Julie asks.

He nods and walks up the stairs to the loft. He reaches for his bag and zips open the biggest pocket, where he keeps his own worn-and-torn journal, and his fingertips ghost over the cover of it. It feels like a lifetime ago that he decorated it with its colorful stickers and doodles, and maybe it technically was— he’d been dead for more years than he’d been alive, _and_ it had been more in use while he was still alive rather than during his afterlife— but he never lived that time and it just reminds him how much he missed out on while he and Alex and Luke were in that dark room.

He shakes away the thought and takes the journal, closing the bag and putting it back where it was before. He flips the pages open as he walks back down the stairs, and sees words that bring all too many memories rushing back to him.

He turns to one particular page with a few doodles and some words in all capital letters that have been underlined, and sighs. He sits down next to Julie at the piano bench and turns the journal towards her so she can see it.

_“Feels like you’re there in every room / Feels like maybe the tension between us lives here more than we do,”_ Julie reads slowly, and looks over at him.

Reggie winces. He sees her concern but he doesn’t think he can talk about it right now. “Not that one. The page on the right,”

“Oh. Okay,” she says quietly, and looks back down at the open journal. _“You’re the only family I’ll ever need / I know because around you I feel seen.”_

He doesn’t look at Julie’s face. “Keep going,” he murmurs, looking at the piano keys and trying to remember which notes on the bass he came up with for these lyrics.

“ _And you’re my ride-or-die, I can’t lie, / To the end of the world or trying to fly / I know I would follow you anywhere / As long as I can hold your hand on the way there._ ”

Reggie leans his head on her shoulder and thanks whatever divine power exists when he doesn’t pass through her. Hesitantly, he looks up and sees that she has a soft smile on her face. He smiles back.

She ruffles his hair and he makes a face, but he really hopes she knows that he’s happy. Really happy.

“That sounds like a perfect place to start, Reggie.”

♮ ♮ ♮

Reggie isn’t that used to the songwriting process. Luke wrote almost all the songs for Sunset Curve, and combined with Julie’s talents they’re an unstoppable duo, so Reggie hasn’t written many songs for Sunset Curve or for Julie and the Phantoms.

Working on the lyrics with Julie is an interesting process. He’d expected working with her would be intense, but she doesn’t try to push him or herself to write more than they think they can handle. As soon as one of them gets a brain block, she suggests they take a break and do something else.

“It should come naturally, not by forcing it so much. The words will come eventually,” she tells him sagely, and he finds himself nodding in agreement.

They take a walk when Reggie can’t think of any ideas for the second verse. They listen to some of the songs from Sunset Curve’s demo CD. Julie catches him up on some of the biggest pop music icons of the past 25 years, and shows him recent country music and some of her favorite artists. They shoot basketballs outside the garage with Luke and Alex. Julie does homework and Reggie skims some of her textbooks.

They try anything and everything to change the direction their brains are going, to use different parts of their brains so they can think differently.

When they’ve finished writing some of the lyrics for the chorus, they start to work on how the song will sound. Julie has come up with a few ideas for a tune by the time she’s done studying, even made a short list to remember what chords she’s thinking of, so they head back down to the garage studio. She sits down at the piano bench and he leans against the piano with his bass around his neck.

She hums a few notes and Reggie feels like his heart drops and dissolves in his stomach acid.

Suddenly it’s like he’s back at the Hollywood Ghost Club again, which was even creepier when they were being controlled than he’d thought it was when they arrived the first time, but this time he doesn’t know if hearing Julie sing will help him get out of it this time.

It’s a memory and it’s a nightmare and part of Reggie knows this isn’t real, but then Caleb is there saying _“swing it, baby”_ and Reggie feels like he might be sick.

If he hadn’t been so charmed by all the food and dancing that Caleb offered at the club, maybe it would’ve been easier for him to initially pick up on how creepy the guy was.

And then Reggie is back at the studio and Julie’s clutching his hand like she’s trying to bring him back to life again.

“Reggie?”

He doesn’t even remember sitting down at the piano bench.

He doesn’t know how to meet her eyes right now, so he keeps his eyes focused on their hands lying on the keyboard of the piano. His palm is facing down, flat across several keys, and he shifts his wrist so his palm is facing up, and then he folds his fingers over the back of her palm.

She squeezes his hand right back.

“Are you okay?”

He looks at her and nods. “Yeah, could we just, uh, not do that melody?”

“Yeah, of course,” she gives him a smile and crosses it out from the list. “I thought it sounded a little off anyway.”

He laughs lightly and leans his head on her shoulder.

♮ ♮ ♮

Reggie misses sleeping. It’s weird not being able to sleep, but since it’s something only necessary when _(if)_ you have a physical body, it’s not really something he has to do anymore. It’s not really something he _can_ do, which sucks.

At night Luke gets quiet and Alex gets anxious. Sometimes Alex doesn’t even stay in the studio overnight.

Reggie doesn’t know if there’s a pattern with how he acts at night, but he doesn’t really talk as much. Sometimes he goes on walks at night, and at first it was to try to get his brain to quiet down.

It doesn’t work like it did when he was alive.

He realized after the first few times that walking around the city for hours and hours doesn’t clear his head at all. Instead it just makes him sad. He missed twenty-five years of culture, twenty-five years of history, twenty-five years of _life_.

He loves his band, but sometimes, a part of him really wishes he hadn’t had to die with them. He always calls that part of his brain selfish, because that’s how it feels every time he has that thought. He wishes he could stop feeling so bitter, deep down, but why didn’t the universe let them live? If he had lived all this time— no, no, if _the band_ had lived all this time, including Bobby, because Reggie hates what he did but he really really misses him— then he wouldn’t have lost contact with his own parents, and Luke’s parents wouldn’t be so sad, and Luke wouldn’t be so sad, and they would have all gotten the lives they’d dreamed of having because they were—

Reggie has to stop himself mid-walk, in the middle of the street somewhere in L.A., to blink past tears. Because they were just kids when they died. How messed up is that?

And then they almost died again less than a month ago, and they’d all pretty much just accepted the fact that if they crossed over as planned then they would never get to play with Julie again.

But then the plan didn’t work and they didn’t cross over and instead they just decided unanimously that they would rather disappear from reality completely.

He starts wondering if Julie was right when she said working for Caleb was better than not existing at all.

Reggie doesn’t know what to do. He knows he should have stopped going on these walks as soon as he realized how sad he gets while walking and thinking to himself, but isn’t it better to feel all of this at night so he can be himself during the day? So that his bandmates won’t worry? Alex is the anxious one and Luke is kinda the sad, angsty puppy and Reggie… he’s supposed to be the happy, goofy one.

Yeah, yeah, logically that doesn’t make sense and Reggie _knows_ that, but his bandmates have tried protecting him forever because of how slow he is for anything that’s not a classroom setting. It’s not worth worrying them over something he can deal with himself.

He can deal with this. He grew up in a household where his parents were fighting about something every other day of the week, and still managed to ace all his classes and be a good friend and a good bandmate and a good bassist. If he could deal with that, he can deal with this.

Reggie walks all over the city until it’s almost dawn, trying to let himself think about everything he’s been trying not to think about during the day.

Then he starts thinking about the fact that he’s dead, he suddenly wonders how his parents reacted. But then he goes down a rabbit hole. _Did they even react? Did I ever get a proper funeral? Is my body buried somewhere or did they cremate me? How long did they stay in town after I died?_

It’s too much. Thinking about his parents and his death and how they may have reacted or may not have reacted at all (because it sucks but he honestly doesn’t know)… it feels like too much.

He stops against a building and cries into his hands, because that’s how he deals with everything. He cries into his hands when he’s sad and he plays guitar with his hands and he helps the band write music with these hands and he would fight for them with these same hands, and all of a sudden he just wants to scream.

It’s all too much.

He drops his hands away from his eyes. His cheeks still feel damp but suddenly his arms feel too heavy to bring them back up and wipe the tears away. He looks up at the brightening sky. The sun is rising and Alex and Luke are probably both back at the studio by now and the Molinas are going to be waking up soon and Reggie panics because he should have been able to fix himself by now, right? Shouldn’t he be back to being normal, happy Reggie by now?

He moves his gaze from the sky to the buildings. He can’t face them like this. He doesn’t want them to see him like this. They’re overprotective enough as it is, but they can’t protect him from his own brain. It’s not their job to deal with this for him. They’ve already done so much by being his friends.

He doesn’t want to face them like this, but he doesn’t want them to worry.

He poofs to Julie’s school.

With a pen and a sticky note from a teacher’s desk, he writes a note in as neat handwriting as he can muster. He roams the halls of the school until he finds the locker he’s pretty sure he remembers as Julie’s, and then leaves the sticky note on the inside of her locker by letting his hand pass through the locker door enough that he can plant the note there.

Reggie lets out a sigh. He kind of wants to be alone. He needs to breathe.

He stands in the empty hallways of Julie’s school for what might be anywhere from a minute to an hour, eyes closed and just trying to breathe. He teleports out when the first people walk in, because right now to breathe he needs enough quiet to not think of music or his friends or anything else.

He didn’t think being dead would be so exhausting.

He didn’t think ghosts could be haunted.

♮ ♮ ♮

Julie wakes up slowly, trying to figure out why something in her chest feels so wrong. She snuggles a little deeper into her blankets, thinking maybe she’s just cold, but her alarm goes off and she gets up and realizes she’s not cold. She doesn’t know what it is, but something feels weird.

Unless it’s the fact that a not-something feels weird.

Julie gets dressed as fast as possible, and while her dad is still upstairs brushing his teeth she dashes out the front door and rushes to the studio as fast as possible.

“Something’s wrong,” Alex says before she can. He’s pacing when she comes in. Luke is curled up in a bundle of blankets on the couch. “Reggie hasn’t come back.”

Julie frowns and shuts the door behind her. “Well, where did he go?”

“We don’t know. The three of us kinda do our own things at night,” Alex looks almost guilty. “I’ve never really asked him. He’s always back by morning, so I thought it was fine. Turns out it might not be fine?”

Julie’s feet have taken her over to Alex. She tries reaching for his shoulders to stop him from pacing, but her hands fall through him. She tries to, once again, put a hand on his shoulder. It just falls through again.

“Alex, please stop pacing. We’re gonna find him.”

“What if we don’t?” She turns away from Alex to look at Luke. It’s the first time he’s spoken since she came in. “We haven’t seen Caleb since that night at the Orpheum. It’s been weeks now. What if—”

“Don’t say that, Luke,” Julie interrupts. “Don’t even think about it.”

“But what if he’s right?” Alex asks, and starts pacing again.

“He can’t be,”

“How do you know?”

“Because I can still feel him!”

Luke and Alex both look confused. Alex finally sits down, and then they’re both facing her looking for further explanation. Julie just sighs and shakes her head.

“The two times you guys went to the Hollywood Ghost Club, I couldn’t feel you at all. There’s a reason I thought you were really gone, that night at the Orpheum,” She gives them each a look, because that night had been a rollercoaster of emotions for her, and she knows they know that because they’ve all talked about that night at length, but she didn’t know how to explain _this_ , at the time. She still doesn’t really know how to explain it, but she has to try right now. “If Caleb had gotten his hands on Reggie, I wouldn’t be able to feel him right now, but—”

“Feel it how?”

Julie blinks. “What?”

“It’s a sort of awareness, right?” Luke reiterates, and Julie nods. “Do you feel it somewhere in your body or is it a mental thing?”

Julie closes her eyes and tries to focus on it. There’s a tingling feeling that’s been lingering just beneath her skin ever since the boys came into her life, and usually she tells herself it’s just goosebumps because that would be normal and expected given that they’re _ghosts_ , but this isn’t that. It’s a warmth that burns beneath her skin, and she can feel this warmth in her bones just as clearly as she can feel her own heartbeat when she stops moving.

She tries to focus on it. It’s spread out so it seeps into every inch of her body, the same way her love for the boys has seeped into her soul, but she follows it from the pads of her fingers and through her arms to where it collects in her chest like the air she breathes collects in her lungs. But she doesn’t think that’s where the feeling originates.

“It’s hard to describe,” Julie tells them, realizing she’s probably been silent a little too long. Her eyes are still closed as she tries to hone in on that sense. “It’s easiest to notice in my chest, I think?”

She takes a deep breath in and breathes out again. Her eyes snap open.

“That night. At the Orpheum. How—” she shakes her head, trying to find the words. “How did you guys know that I was on stage? You were with Caleb, how did you know to join in?”

“We heard you,” Luke replies quietly, meeting her eyes for the first time. Every time she’s looked at him before this, his eyes have been clouded with worry, but now he looks like he’s found clarity. “It was like the first time we heard you play. We were somewhere else but we could hear it somehow.” _Like maybe you were already a part of us_ , his eyes almost say, _even before you joined the band._ “Ever since you played our CD, people have been able to hear us when we play together. And they can see us when we play with you.” Julie’s breath catches in her throat. “Do you think our music actually, like, really _connects_ us?”

“What would we do if it did?” Julie asks, “Write a song asking Reggie to come home and hope he hears it wherever he is?” She knows she’s being practical, but she feels like she’s being cruel when she sees Luke’s face deflate.

“Luke and I can look for him. We’ll check all over the city. You have school, Julie, but if you find him, then…”

“I’ll sing, and somehow you’ll know to come find me,” she finishes, giving Alex a small smile. “I hope you find him first, though.”

She gets up to leave the studio, but Luke poofs in front of her and she squeaks in surprise, clapping a hand over her heart.

“Sorry,” Luke says hurriedly, and reaches for her hand. His hand goes through and he frowns in frustration while she purses her lips, feeling her chest tighten a little. She hones in on the feeling of _them_ again, somewhere that might be in her diaphragm, and reaches for his hand. She can feel him, now. She tries to focus as much as she can on that point of contact so she doesn’t lose it, and looks toward his face. “How did you do that?”

Julie just shrugs, biting her lip a little, because she’s mostly only been able to practice this whole touch thing with Reggie recently and she doesn’t think she can bring that up right now, and looks back down at their hands as he intertwines their fingers together.

“If you find him, you’ll know what to do,” It’s hard to concentrate on holding Luke’s hand when he’s looking at her like this. She loses her grip on him and she shuts her eyes, a frown curling onto her lips. But Luke reaches out for her again, this time for her shoulder, and his hand doesn’t go through.

With the way he holds her, she can never tell which of them feels more like an anchor.

“Okay,” she says quietly, and goes in for a hug.

It’s still a little weird sometimes, hugging ghosts, but she’s doing her best to get used to the difference. Hugging people who are alive— other lifers like her— feels normal. She can sink into her dad’s arms or lean on Flynn without needing to worry that they’ll disappear. Hugging the boys is a little strange, because they’re ghosts, and she never knows how long she’ll have before they stop being solid enough for her to touch. Every time she hugs them feels like she’s begging them to stay. Like she needs to hold them tight enough that they can stay here, in this moment, with her, without being pulled somewhere else.

Nothing has been the same ever since Caleb’s stamps. She knows the marks are gone and they’re not getting zapped anymore, but she’s still so afraid of losing them. They’re all still so afraid of losing each other.

And then she suddenly remembers that day last week, when Reggie was trying to explain why he felt weird around Nick and he said _I’m just really worried, okay? I love you guys and I don’t want to lose any of you._

She wishes she could hug Reggie like this right now, but she’ll do that when they find him. When he’s back with them, she’ll hug him like this. Not to keep him anywhere but because it’s still so scary to think about ever leaving for school one day and coming back to find that they’ve finally disappeared forever.

Maybe it’ll let him know that she can’t bear to lose him either.

She needs all of them to know how much they mean to her, and even the songs aren’t enough sometimes. Sometimes physical contact like hugs are the only way to express how much she loves them.

Her arms tighten around Luke.

“Alex, come on,”

And then she turns to wrap her arms around Alex, and her arms wrap around his torso instead of around his shoulders because he’s too tall for her to reach his shoulders, but it’s comfortable and if she stands on her tiptoes like she’s doing right now then she can put her head against his chest. There’s no heartbeat there like there would be if he were a lifer, but she still feels more stable when he wraps one of his arms around her back, and the other around Luke as he presses against her side, his head falling into the crook of Alex’s neck.

Julie feels much more stable than before, but she’s also inexplicably aware of and almost haunted by the empty space beside her where Reggie should be.

♮ ♮ ♮

Julie goes to school like it’s a normal day. She feels like her whole personality is a little muted, with Reggie missing, and according to Flynn it’s visible enough given her outfit choice. Julie doesn’t really get it, but Flynn is right regardless. She’s not going to feel herself until she knows he’s okay.

“He’s been kind of out of it since our show at the Orpheum,” she confides in Flynn, lowering her voice a little. More people have been trying to talk to her about the band since the performance at the Orpheum and if someone in the halls hears her mention it they might run with any rumor they can hear. “I think whatever happened with Caleb that night really bugged him.”

“Didn’t they also almost cross over?”

Julie nods. “Yeah. And he seems really unsettled whenever he sees Nick at our performances.”

“I think that’s just a bro code thing,” Flynn snorts, and slings her arm around Julie’s shoulders. Julie lets out a long quiet sigh and leans into her, because she really does need as much physical contact as possible to get through this strange and stressful day.

“No, no,” Julie shakes her head with a sigh. “He said he didn’t feel _safe_ around Nick, which is way different from not liking him.”

“Those three died eating bad hot dogs and you’re gonna take their word on a bad vibe?” Julie gives her a look, and Flynn just smiles cheekily. “They’re ghosts, Jules. I’m sure they have lives when you’re not around.”

“I know that, but he’d usually be back by now. Reggie has never been gone this long without saying something first.”

Julie knows she’s probably letting her worries get the best of her, but Reggie has always been _there_ and she feels like she’s taken that for granted until now. She feels like a bad friend for taking him for granted until now.

“Maybe something came up,” Flynn suggests.

Julie grimaces. “They’re dead, Flynn. What could have even come up, except Caleb?”

“Jules, if that creepy guy comes back then you’ll all beat him. ” 

“Not if it’s not all of us!” Flynn’s arm drops from around her shoulder as they reach Julie’s locker. Julie steps forward to put the combination in. “We’re all stronger together, and so much better together. If he came after Reggie while he was alone—”

“Then you’d know,” Flynn reminds her.

Julie bites her lip, then realizes she did her locker combination wrong and groans, starting over.

“I know, I’m just really worried. Caleb knows more about all this ghost stuff than me and the boys and Willie combined. Even if he didn’t drag him back to that Ghost Club, he probably could’ve found some other place to take him where I wouldn’t think anything was wrong.”

“You think that dead magician dude _knows_ that you can feel them when they’re not at his club?”

Julie frowns. “I don’t know.”

She got her locker combination wrong again. Did she do her freshman year combo again? She starts over again, spinning it past 0 three times to clear the combination lock. It takes her another half minute or so, but eventually she finally gets her locker combination right. She unlocks it with a smile, and closes her eyes contentedly as she opens the door.

“What’s that?”

Julie’s eyes snap back open. She reaches out and snatches the sticky note off the inside of her locker door before she even reads it.

She has time before class. And, even if she didn’t, she would _make_ time for this.

“I need to go. I’ll be back in time for class,” she tells Flynn, shutting her locker door and expecting that to be the end of it.

“I’m coming with you,” Flynn says almost immediately, stepping into place right beside her. Julie doesn’t respond, just gives her best friend a small smile, hoping it’ll do well enough for now to express her gratitude for always staying by her side.

They walk out of the still-open double doors of the school, and Julie doesn’t stop walking until she gets to a less-populated area of grass. She doesn’t know what to sing. It feels like her brain is choking up because she’s panicking. She’s panicking so bad, and she doesn’t even realize it fully until Flynn puts a hand on her arm to stop her from shaking. How badly was she shaking? She doesn’t even know.

So she starts singing parts of the song she’s been writing with Reggie, even though she and Reggie haven't yet shown the song to the others. She can’t think of anything else.

It’s a good song but she doesn’t get to present it that way; it sounds more like a broken lullaby. When Luke and Alex appear in front of her they look more worried than anything else. She’s barely holding herself back from sobbing.

She wishes they had been able to play the song for them before this. It was _for_ them, after all. She wishes her brain hadn’t failed her so she could have sung something— _anything—_ else.

She can’t look at either of them. She holds the note out for one of them to take and buries her face in the crook of Flynn’s neck as she starts crying.

“ _‘I can’t breathe in a place where everything is so heated and stuffy and I’m so close to my body.’_ ” Alex reads out. “What does that even _mean_?”

Julie can’t answer but she thinks she knows where he is.

“So close to his… Alex, where were we buried?”

♮ ♮ ♮

Luke and Alex borrow Julie’s phone to look up where Sunset Curve was buried, and when nothing comes up, they look up burial sites in L.A. Luke doesn’t want to leave Julie alone when she’s upset like this, but after they give back her phone and she promises to help them look after she gets out of school for the day, Flynn is ushering her off to class and there’s nothing else he can do for her.

L.A. has a lot of graveyards, as it turns out, but they don’t find Reggie at any of the ones they go to.

They find all their graves, but they don’t find Reggie.

Luke is getting really worried. This isn’t like Reggie. Something is definitely wrong. First Reggie goes out for the night and doesn’t come back by dawn. Then instead of coming back and saying where he was, he goes and leaves a cryptic message on the inside of Julie’s locker.

Luke misses being alive, most days, because there are so many things that he and Reggie and Alex all missed that they’ll never get to experience now. Luke will never get to make up with his parents. Reggie might never know what happened to his. Alex might never get to prove his parents wrong. None of them can ever get married or have kids now. They’ll never get to celebrate when one of them turns 21 and is finally legally of age to drink.

Hell, none of them ever even turned 18.

“Do you think he’s okay?” Luke asks Alex as they walk out of the graveyard where their bodies were buried twenty-five years ago.

Alex shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know. Julie said she could still feel him, but she was crying after she read the note so she seems way more worried than she’s letting on,”

“Yeah, but do _you_ think he’s okay?”

“I can try to find Willie? If he already knows where Caleb is, then we’ll at least know that Reggie is safe.”

“Alex.” Alex stops walking and finally looks at him, and Luke thinks maybe his voice may have sounded a little too angry when he said Alex’s name. He stops too, takes a breath, and tries to keep his voice even. “There’s a difference between ‘safe’ and ‘okay.’ Do you think Reggie is okay?”

Alex hesitates, looking down at his feet and grinding the heel of his sneaker into the dirt. Luke doesn’t comment on it.

“No, not really,” Luke winces because yeah, he didn’t really think so either. “He’d be back by now if he were.”

They stand there for a bit. Either being a ghost has messed with his perception of time, or he’s just been in too many time-warp spaces to trust himself on how long a moment is anymore. It feels like only a few seconds but for all Luke knows, they could have been staring at each other for a few minutes.

A few drawn-out, awkward minutes.

“Maybe we should check the studio again,” Luke suggests quietly. “See if he’s been back there since we left?”

“Worth a shot,” Alex responds, and they both poof out.

♮ ♮ ♮

Reggie doesn’t know how long he’s been here, but he’s been watching people come and go for a while now. It’s hard to tell through the clouds, but the sun seems like it’s risen and lowered quite a bit through the sky already. If he weren’t a ghost then he’d probably be cold from the wind, but he just feels it pass through him.

It’s weird to look at L.A. from up so high. When he’s down in the streets, it feels larger than life, like he could soak it all in and live off that energy for days, but when he’s up here watching it all from above, it looks like any other big city.

Then again, he’s never really _been_ to any other big city.

Reggie groans and buries his face in his hands. This is not the first slightly-morbid realization he’s had today about his death and how much he never got to do before he died.

Reggie has never left California. Bobby betrayed them and _stole_ their songs and passed them off on his own, and got to go on world tours and got his own huge mansion and got everything he needed or wanted to raise his kid, while he and Luke and Alex had practically been erased by time and are stuck practicing in a garage and their families probably still think they died chasing a dream that was never meant to be.

Yeah, maybe Luke is right that with Julie they’ve gotten their second chance, but at what cost?

Reggie wants to stop feeling like this. He wishes his brain had a reset button like when he’d go to sleep crying as a kid, after having to listen to a particularly bad argument between his parents, and he’d wake up in the morning feeling right as rain.

(Who came up with that expression, anyway? What was so right about the rain? Reggie loved playing in the rain when he was alive, but it doesn’t feel the same anymore. When he was alive, it would stick to his skin and soak his clothes and drip through his hair, but now it passes through him just like everything else and it’s just another one of those things that feels so strangely _off_.) 

He’s sometimes solid now and he can sometimes be seen, but he’s still not human. He can’t eat or sleep or even technically breathe now, and he can’t feel the rain or the wind anymore like he could when he was alive. When he went down to the beach, barefoot in his pajamas when he was a kid, the waves lapped against his feet and calmed him. He’s tried that recently and it doesn’t work anymore.

He’s still a ghost. He still doesn’t feel like he’s whole. All his senses are so spectacularly dulled. It feels like every time he plays bass or sings, his senses are heightened and he feels a little more alive, but he’s never going to be as whole as he was back then.

He hears someone walk over and stand a few feet away from him. He leans his shoulder further into the glass barrier of the building’s observation deck.

“Reggie?”

He turns his head and it’s Julie and he loves her so much, he really does, but he doesn’t want her to be here right now.

“How did you get up here?” he asks quietly, but his voice comes out as more of a croak.

(Though now that he’s a ghost, it’s not like he can really drink water to rehydrate himself from crying so much. Does it even make sense that he can cry, as a ghost?)

“It’s open to the public,” she says, and sits down next to him. She’s holding her phone to her ear, but she’s looking at him, and he wishes she were looking at anything else. Anything else as long as she isn’t looking at him like this— all puffy-eyed and distressed and tragic and so _not_ like the happy, goofy, dorky Reggie he knows they all know and love.

(Is it bad that he suddenly wonders if they’d ever be able to love him like this? After all the time he’s spent being so consistently goofy and happy around them, would they even think it’s still him?)

There haven’t been many people walking around the US Bank Tower’s Observation Deck for the past few hours, so Reggie assumed it wasn’t open to that many people. Now, though, he looks around and realizes that these probably aren’t all people who work here.

“I think they sometimes have yoga classes here, actually,” Julie continues, and he snorts.

He actually _snorts_.

He can’t imagine doing yoga here, on a glass-walled observation deck of the tallest building in Los Angeles. He can’t imagine doing _downward dog_ on this observation deck, because how can you stick your butt in the air on the tallest building in L.A. and not start laughing, knowing how many people could be walking by and would just have to deal with seeing your butt in the air?

He starts laughing at the idea, and Julie smiles, and then his laughing slowly dissolves into crying because even if he did a downward dog or something else outrageous, nobody would see it.

He misses laughing. He misses making people laugh. He misses making people smile.

He misses being seen.

Now he can only make people smile when he’s making music with his bandmates, and there’s only one person still alive who he can make laugh, and that’s the person sitting next to him watching him fall apart.

“Reggie,” Julie’s hand finds its way to his knee, and it feels like an anchor, like his mind suddenly and finally finds its way back to reality instead of the hellscape of _‘what-if’_ s his brain has been forcing him through for hours.

He tries to smile at her.

“Reggie, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he shakes his head. “I don’t know why I feel like this, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I don’t want to feel like this,”

“Nobody does, Reg,” she tells him quietly. “But feeling is part of being human.”

“But I’m not human anymore,” he whispers, and she frowns and opens her mouth like she wants to argue with him and reject that idea completely, but he continues, “I’m a ghost and I can’t feel things physically like I could when I was alive, so why can I still feel like this in my own head? I’m dead, I shouldn’t have any problems left to worry about, even if we still haven’t crossed over for whatever reason.”

“I don’t think being dead erases your emotions. You still have a soul,” Julie points off, and he just frowns.

“Well, the only real expert on all this ghost stuff and this whole ‘being dead’ thing is MIA, so it’s not like there’s anyone we can ask,” Reggie huffs, and then sighs. “Sorry, that’s— that’s not fair. I don’t want Caleb anywhere near us, I’m just so tired of having questions. And I— I don’t want to cross over, I really don’t, because I really love you guys and I love playing with you and I don’t know if I’ll get to be with the guys when I cross over but I just— I don’t know,” He frowns and rubs his face with one hand.

Julie is biting her lip when he looks up. “What are some of the questions you’ve got?”

He shrugs. “Why did we have to die so young?” Julie flinches at his tired, almost nonchalant tone, and he wonders if she’s thought about that too. “And why didn’t we cross over? What’s our unfinished business, if it wasn’t the Orpheum? Why did Caleb want our souls so bad that he was willing to destroy us if he didn’t get them? And why—”

He shakes his head when his voice breaks off, because really, where’s the logic in being able to cry now that he’s a ghost and no longer has a physical body?

“Why am I still thinking about my parents and about Bobby when neither of them are _here_ anymore?” He wipes away the new tears across his cheek and tries to will his tear ducts to stop. “Bobby was our best friend, and maybe Luke and Alex can move on without him after finding out what he did to us, but I can’t. He was my best friend before Sunset Curve ever even existed. A-and my parents— I don’t even know why I’m still thinking of them, because I don’t know where they are or how long they stayed here after I died or if they’re still alive, but,” he lets out a sigh and lets his head bump against the glass of the observation deck. “I think I just miss being alive.”

He shuts his eyes for a few seconds, because his eyes actually kind of hurt from crying so much over the past few hours, and when he opens his eyes, Julie’s phone is in her lap and she has her arms out, silently asking him if he wants a hug.

And he does, he really does, but, “people might think you’re weird if they see you hugging air,” he jokes.

“Does it matter?” Julie asks, and he shakes his head and accepts the hug.

Hugging Julie is different from hugging the boys. Hugging or any other physical contact with Luke and Alex feels like they’re two different temperatures of air trying to coexist in the same space without turning everything into a tornado. Hugging Julie feels like she’s keeping him from evaporating and floating away into the air.

He wonders how it feels for her.

“I’m sorry if I made you guys worry,” he says suddenly, and pulls back from the hug. “I didn’t want you guys to see me like this and I should have said more about where I was and that I was safe,”

“It’s okay, Reggie,”

“No, it’s not, don’t say that,”

“It’s fine—”

“It’s really not, and I’m sorry,”

“Just please come to us, next time?”

He doesn’t want there to be a next time, but he nods just in case. Julie sighs in relief.

“How did you find me?”

She shrugs and smiles. “If you’re looking for a star, you’ve got to look up,”

He stares at her for a moment and then starts laughing, _really laughing_ , because that’s one of the sweetest things Julie or anyone else has ever said to him and it feels good, but it reminds him again of doing downward dog on this deck and he can’t help but laugh because now it doesn’t feel sad anymore.

At least Julie would see him. At least the guys would.

♮ ♮ ♮

Luke and Alex are at the studio, and Luke is sitting down at the couch and trying to write while Alex is pacing, because Julie texted Carlos so he’d tell them that she found Reggie, but she didn’t say anything else.

About an hour after the text, Luke hears Reggie and Julie’s voices outside the house, and Luke immediately drops his pen and his journal and poofs to where they are.

And _thank God_ , Reggie is fine.

Luke wraps his arms around Reggie and squeezes him, and Reggie hugs him right back.

“I was so worried, man,” Luke says into his shoulder, and Reggie sighs.

“Yeah, I’m really sorry, man, I—”

“Reginald!” Alex exclaims as he poofs in, and joins the hug too. “We’re so glad you’re okay,” and then he pulls back and pushes Luke away too so he can get a better look at Reggie. “Wait, _are_ you okay? Luke didn’t, like, crush a rib or anything, right?”

“Hey!” Luke protests and Alex glances over at him.

“Oh, yeah, you’re right, you’d need muscle to do that,” Alex waves his hand and looks away from Luke, ignoring the way Luke sputters and scoffs and frowns, in favor of focusing back on Reggie. “Are you okay, though? Not just physically?”

“Yeah, I think I’m feeling better now,” he looks down at his feet. “Sorry for worrying you guys.”

Alex rolls his eyes and wraps Reggie in another hug. “It’s fine, man, just _talk_ to us next time, okay? We love you,”

“Yeah, and we’re gonna care about you and worry about you no matter what, okay?” Luke chimes in and ruffles Reggie’s hair from where his head rests on Alex’s shoulder.

“I know,” Reggie says quietly, and relaxes into Alex’s arms a little more, like all the tension from the past few weeks is finally leaving his shoulders and dripping down into the floor, back into the earth’s core. “I love you guys too.”

It feels like ages later that he finally lets go of Alex and looks at them, and Luke can see that he almost looks as happy as he was when he was alive.

_Almost_ . It’s always _almost_. They’ll never look or feel as whole as they did when they were alive, but it always feels closer to that feeling when they’re all together.

“Are we okay?” Luke asks Reggie, and Reggie just smiles.

“We’re always going to be okay, man. We’re us,” Reggie looks so happy but Luke reaches out and gently grabs ahold of Reggie’s arm.

“Hey, no, Reg, I—”

Luke has never been great at talking about feelings. He’s always been better at writing to express himself, and now he finds himself blanking as he tries to talk to Reggie about it.

Maybe he needs to put more effort in to try to _talk_ about feelings, for Reggie and Alex’s sakes.

“I know that we’re us, and I know— I know that I said _‘we’re the only family we’re ever going to need,’_ and I know— y’know, I know we don’t talk about feelings much,” he looks at Reggie, and he’s not frowning or otherwise indicating that he wants Luke to stop talking, so Luke keeps going. “And we should probably talk about feelings more. Especially if you need to— o-or want to?”

Luke shakes his head, because he’s still not saying what he’s trying to say and he hasn’t been able to figure out the words while writing for the last hour or so. But he’s trying.

“And I think you know we love you but just tell us if we’re not, like, saying it enough? Because we’re here for you and we want to be there for you if something is ever wrong, and I know we’re not the best at noticing— actually, no, that’s just me, you know I’m terrible at noticing things, but I swear for you I’ll try to get better at it— but if I don’t notice then please, _please_ tell me if something is wrong, okay? Saying that we’re never not going to be okay feels like a cop-out and a lie because that’s not how friends work and it’s definitely not how we work, so… I don’t know, but just please just talk to us next time?”

And Reggie is smiling and he wraps Luke and Alex back into a hug. “Yeah, I’ll try to talk to you guys about it next time. I’ll try to get better at talking to you guys about stuff like this,”

And it’s not a promise that things will get better, because none of them can promise that, but it’s a promise that they’ll all try to be better for each other, and that’s enough to hold them together for now.

Reggie knows he’s not unstoppable. He never has been, and he never will be. He died getting food poisoning from a bad hot dog and in his afterlife, his soul almost got completely destroyed because he trusted the wrong person and thought it would be polite to shake their hand.

Reggie has made mistakes all throughout his life and throughout his afterlife, and he’s definitely going to make more, but he’s got his family by his side throughout it all, and that’s enough to keep him anchored to earth and to reality for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find me on tumblr @/heartsick-stranger


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